Antec Overture II

Description

Full details are at the website, but this case supports both full size and mini ATX boards. Spots for two external 5.25" devices and two external 3.5" devices. Most folk will set this up with at least one DVD drive in the 5.25 and maybe a card reader. There's also space for two internal 3.5" drives.

My setup of this will be one DL DVD +/- R drive, two internal IDE drives, and eventually two SATA drives. Current setup has about 240GB of storage.

The case itself is very nice looking. Piano black on the outside, and brushed chrome on the front. Blue LEDs complement the overall "component" look. Good, powerful power supply at 450W. Has a single case fan in the rear, along with an under-drive blower and a PS fan as well. With all three going, this is not a quiet case. The fans all support MB fan speed control, unfortunately, for some reason my MB has support, but is not using it. In addition to the fans, the top of the case is vented to allow for the heat from CPU and video cards to rise.

Though this case would not look out of place in a component rack, it is a big case. Given the noise, I would also not place it anywhere near the seating area. Ultimately this was to be the living room MythTV box, but all things considered, I think it is going to wind up in the component closet in the theater room (with 109" projection screen). I'll hook it up via DVI to my projector, and also stream to my desktop and eventually to a front-end only box in the living room.

Issues and Problems

The Power Supply has a sensor cable for monitoring the speed of the fan, but when this is plugged in to the motherboard the fan speed increases and sounds like a jet engine. Just unplug the cable, the fan has a built in thermal sensor and will adjust itself as required.

This case has fans or vents on 5 out of 6 sides. This makes it very hard to put anywhere, especially on carpet or standing on it side. The Power Supply has a large 8" fan sucking from the bottom and blowing out the side, the hard drive turbine fans blow out the other side, the case fan blows out the back, and there is a big vent on the top above the CPU. The case is also huge, so check your TV cabinet dimensions before splashing out on this case.

As stated, noise and size are the only two problems. Aside from that, this has the Antec quality that I've learned to expect. It is amazing that aside from modders, most people overlook the case, but having a solid case that cools well is as important as your choice of motherboard or video card.

Some people have problems with the power supply on the Overture II not being easily replaceable. This causes problems if the power supply has problems or other issues. In my (user:Pridkett) experience, the power supply generated noise on the PCI bus under load and caused errors while tuning QAM on pcHDTV HD-3000 cards.

EDIT by someone else: I have this case and it works fantastically. I initially had a bad power supply that was overheating. I removed it and shipped it back to Antec for a free replacement and in the meantime was able to use a standard 300 watt power supply by running the power cable into the left side of the case and plugging directly into the power supply. I've since received the replacement and the system is running better (because PS is not overheating, frying hard drives(2 total) and causing random shutdowns like it was). I have an 80GB PATA drive for the OS(mounted above PS since it is no longer overheating) and a 640GB SATA RAID array (mounted in the back of the case next to the processor). Oh, and I also had to purchase a Zalman processor HSF because you really hear everything with the two vents on the top of the case (and Thermaltake Volcano=loud!). The system currently runs Windows XP and GB-PVR but I will be switching to Myth once all my other stuff on there is backed up.

Associated Software

None

Installation guides

No guide, but I just want to point out how accessible this case was. It took a total of 10 minutes to mount and install the motherboard. Cables are well positioned and the manual is generally clear.